diagnosing-bugs

Overview

debugging-and-error-recovery is the protocol: reproduce / localize / reduce / fix / guard. This skill is the discipline inside the localize-and-reduce phases — when the cause isn't obvious, what observation do you make next?

Most debugging wastes time on the wrong hypothesis. The fix isn't more brainstorming; it's a tighter observation. Symptom-driven diagnosis:

• Form ≥3 hypotheses about the cause BEFORE making an observation
• For each hypothesis, predict what observation would distinguish it from the others
• Make the smallest observation that distinguishes
• Eliminate one or more hypotheses
• Repeat until one hypothesis remains

This is debugging-and-error-recovery Step 2 (Localize) made concrete — and Step 3 (Reduce) as well. The two skills together form the full debugging cycle: